Beadworks on display

I have many beadworks made by Chern, Wei-Chi and me on display in the faculty lounge here at the chem dept of NTU.

P, D, and G triply periodic minimal surfaces

Finally, I have all three bead models for P, D, and G minimal surfaces corresponding to the simple cubic, diamond-like, and gyroid-like structures, respectively.

A single helical strip

As I discussed in the previous posts, following Chern's construction scheme, I used 16 helical strips to build the overall 2x2x2 gyroical graphitic structure. Each strip contains 8 eight-bead loops, four with blue color and four with purple color as shown in the following photos.



It is interesting note that one can easily create a kink in this helical strip on purpose. A kink in a helix changes the handedness from left to right.

Gyroidal graphitic structure (2x2x2)

I took a few more photos of GGS with all loose ends removed.

Gyroidal graphitic structure (2x2x2)

Chern and I have tried to construct this model for more than four years. I have basically made it today. But I may still need to clean all loose ends up. With a rough estimation, about 4500 beads and 100 fishing threads are used. Sixteen long threads (about 3.5 meter long for each strip) are used for making helical strips, and the remaining short threads are used to connect these strips. We can still see many threads in these photos. My wife made an interesting comment that this is really "千頭萬緒" (thousands of strands and loose ends, meaning very complicated) in a tradition chinese phrase.






The following two pictures are taken on my airport extreme.

Gyroidal graphitic structure (2x2x1)

I have four unit cells of gyroidal structure done now. I wish I can finish the other half in the next few weeks.